Post-Blizzcon Post

The Hilton is where it’s at, if you want to see people but not be able to communicate with them (it’s very loud).

Alcohol is very expensive compared to my cheap Colorado microbrews. Next time I want to smuggle some stuff.

I met lots of people. I spent most of my time with Arielle, of The Inconspicuous Bear fame, or with KptnKrunch, the Brewmaster SimCraft dev. I didn’t actually converse with many of people, but I shook many hands.

I didn’t go to the WoWInsider party because it was full, but I did go to the Convert To Raid party, which was cool.

Some people recognized me without even looking at my badge! Two people. Video podcast is paying off.

I stood about two feet from Metzen and Pardo. My boyfriend shook Metzen’s hand but I didn’t want to interrupt.

My favorite part was a brunch with Arielle and his crew, where I could actually hear what people said.

I am probably going to race change once a month once the new models come out. The brief glipmses of fem dwarf and gnome looked amazing. I also want to go draenei because DRAENOR!

The WoW demo was pretty sparse as far as mechanics go. The item squish was in (though I didn’t notice it until my second play through). The other stat changes, like removal of hit/exp, were not implemented. Neither was the primary stat change (like that agi should change to int if you go between windwalker and mistweaver). The environments were very cool.

New male orc, dwarf, and gnome models were playable, and they were beautiful. I wish they’d had some new lady models to play.

New talents weren’t playable. I’ll have a post up in a few days discussing them.

I’m bummed about the removal of reforging. Again, another post will discuss why I’ll miss it.

New tertiary stats look cool, but I worry they will, along with the removal of reforging, discourage upgrading to new tiers of gear. If you have some ilvl 650 boots with run speed on them, upgrading to some ilvl 659 boots will be tough because run speed is sort of priceless and hard to change out at a whim. Similarly, the cleave stat will make these upgrades even harder to evaluate on your own.

Other stat changes, such as removal of hit, exp, dodge, parry, are great. The return of armor as a stat is interesting. We did need something to fill the hole those four missing stats left, though previously it was hard to make additional armor exciting.

I’m excited about the new 20 man mythic mode. It was too difficult to keep tanking in both 10 and 25 difficult, which resulted in the “damage dealer who can tank” paradigm of 10 man heroics. Hopefully with the larger size, we can return to bosses that actually threaten us enough to encourage gearing like a tank. It will be tough for 10 man raids to adjust, but it’s much, much better than the drop from 40 to 25 many years ago. Connected realms, multiple difficulties, and flexible sizes leading up to mythic will ease the transition. Maybe I’ll write more on this later.